The Intent of Entertainment

In one of the “How it Went Down” readings about Sarah Silverman, the ‘guy’, (who was an audience member) says something like, its ok if Sarah makes jokes about the Jewish community, but it is a whole different story when it comes to making jokes about “chinks.” I thought this was a very intriguing comment for many reasons.

First, it shows the double standard that our society tends to apply. Many people in class were discussing how certain jokes are appropriate if an individual of that race/religion says them and not ok if they are about a different race/religion than their own. At first this made sense to me and its like I have always thought this “social norm” without really thinking about it. I can see how someone making fun of their own identity is funny and its typically because the jokes they choose to tell are often less offensive to individuals like themselves. For example, a white person might choose to make fun of the Caucasian race with more accepting comments than if an African American chose to make fun of whites with comments that may be less accepted. Overall, there are certain stereotypes in groups of people that are more or less accepted than others and an individual making jokes of their own group will typically chose to poke fun of the stereotypes that are more accepted.

However, when I thought more about this double standard I realized that it does not really matter whose mouth stereotypes are being made fun of from. Society has a deceiving image of certain stereotypes because they have co-opted them. Often, the same stereotypes are poked fun of while other cultural aspects of a group of people go unheard. By only allowing society to hear certain stereotypes get made fun of, the comedian is almost changing the way a society perceives that certain culture. With this thought, I do not believe that anyone has the right to choose how an entire group of people’s culture is perceived by society. I don’t think it make a difference whether the person is in that group or not, that is not a privilege anyone should have.

So these apposing ideas really confuse me. I see both sides, however, I don’t necessarily feel against comedians who use these comical methods to make people laugh. After our last lecture I have come to the conclusion that I believe it’s about the intent of the person poking fun of the stereotype. This makes sense with my first viewpoint because obviously people who are poking fun of themselves don’t intend to inflict pain or offend anyone from their own race/religion etc. Also, going along with the second viewpoint, most comedians’ sole purpose is to entertain. I do not think they are necessarily trying to co-opt other cultures because while trying to entertain their intent is not to condense cultures, restrict real cultures, or give a false image of a certain culture. With that said, although comedians mean to entertain, it does not mean that they don’t also do those things unintentionally. In a discussion we had in class, I thought someone made a good point when they said an individual going to the Sarah Silverman show should go knowing what to expect, and thus should not take offense to the jokes she makes. However, if a comedian goes to speak on a talk show such as Silverman did at Cannons, people are not there to be accepting towards the jokes she makes. In this case, if the saphire of the joke is not correct people will get offended.

All in all, comedians should stick to entertaining audiences with their stereotypical jokes at their own shows where audiences are expecting it, and they’re to see it. While doing that elsewhere, I think is inappropriate.